The best teacher I’ve found on applying personality psychology to the real world is Stefanie Arroyo. She teaches how many people mis-type themselves when they take the online Myers-Briggs tests. Instead, you’ve got to assess a person yourself based on their behavior.

I adapted these 4 simple questions from her teaching. Use them to discover what kind of woman you have on your hands.

Question #1:

Does she enjoy bantering with strangers? (e.g. Uber drivers, new people at church, cashiers at the store, etc.)

Extroverts (E) are naturally drawn to and energized by meeting new people. Introverts (I) only talk to new people if they have a specific reason to.

Question #2:

Is she more of a “head-in-the-clouds” person or “down-to-earth” person?

Intuitive (N) people live in a world of imagination and ideas and tend to miss practical details. Sensing (S) people are practical and detail-oriented and tend to miss the big picture. (About 3 out 4 women are “Sensing”)

Question #3:

Does she talk about what she “thinks” or what she “feels”?

Thinkers (T) are primarily concerned with truth and falsehood and justify their opinions through logic. Feelers (F) are primarily concerned with harmony and justify their opinions based on how it makes themselves and others feel. (About 2 out of 3 women are “Feelers”).

Question #4:

Does she (consistently) follow a meal plan and recipes when preparing dinner… or does she improvise and throw things together?

Judgers (J) use schedules and todo lists and think in terms of tasks – what needs to get done? Perceivers (P) improvise and think in terms of opportunities – what could I do now?

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Personality types are a large part of what creates the unique pleasures and challenges in a marriage.

I’m an INTP and my wife is an ESFP. To put it in archetype terms, my marriage is like an absent-minded professor married to an in-the-moment entertainer.

So my marriage challenges may be very different then, say, a practical-minded man married to an idealist woman.

I went to the post office to ship out some packages. The lady behind the desk was probably in her mid-forties.

She had a big smile. Told me how much she loved Christmas. She didn’t complain that I had a pain-in-the-butt mailing job. She seemed to genuinely enjoy her work. She was simply happy to be alive.

Her pure sense of joy made her look like a genuinely beautiful woman. It’s such a rare thing to see nowadays.

Now, as a 27-year old man, it’s difficult to for me to assess the sexual attractiveness of a middle-age woman. It’s just not on my radar.

But I thought if my wife had that kind of joy when we became old, I don’t think it would matter so much that her body ages and loses some of it’s surface-level beauty. I would still be a happy man.

It reminded me of the following well-known verse:

Your adornment must not be merely external– braiding the hair, and wearing gold jewelry, or putting on dresses; but let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is precious in the sight of God.

-1 Peter 3:3-4

As husbands, we should cultivate this inner beauty in our wives. This doesn’t mean to quit being “shallow” and imagine she has inner beauty that isn’t really there. It means that you shape her inner character to your liking.

To put it another way:

Having a wife who wants to be pleasant and dress sexy for you is far more valuable than a wife who simply looks sexy.

This is how a husband loves his wife. This is how a woman finds inner peace and happiness. This is what is precious in the sight of God.